Slitherine

Development is completed so remaining work is to test to tweak the values so the balance is good.

What about fixing Finland rail gauge?

Because Finland was a part of Russian empire in 19th century, we had and still have, the wide rail gauge.

Of course, this has a minimal relevance for playing, but it's always good to have one more detail historically correct.

Some thoughts and questions on the new sub sweep rules, reposted here:

"* New ASW rules.

a) Surface vessels after movement may perform an ASW sweep to look for hidden subs.
b) ASW sweeps that are successful will attack the first sub revealed and reveal any
other hexes that were swept.
c) The hex clicked on has 2x base probability depending on unit performing the sweep.
d) Base Probability - Convoys and subs is 0 (ie can not sweep), Transports 15,
BB's 35, DD's and CV's 50 . Sweep chance is raised by 10 (ASW) and 5 (Radar)
for each level. Sweep chance is lowered by 10 by Rough Seas and by 10 for each
enemy sub level.
f) Player may press 'm' to have units remain in hex and perform sweep instead of
moving or attacking. Once 'm' is pressed you are committed to perform a sweep
or not. You can not change your decision.
g) If a surface unit stops movement on top of an enemy sub on Sentry 'Zzz' the enemy
sub will be moved to the nearest empty hex. The surface unit may then perform an
ASW sweep."

1) Will eligible surface units sweep automatically? Or to put this another way, is there a way to move and not sweep? For a transport to sweep seems like a pretty bad deal to me (particularly with a mandatory attack afterwards).

2) It says you can sweep for "hidden" subs, would it be possible to sweep for (and therefore immediately attack) revealed subs as well? If not, it seems a bit paradoxical that a revealed sub is safer on the map than a hidden sub.

3) Any thought given to allowing air units some sort of sweep ability? After all, they are being penalized along with other surface ships by the "dodge" rules.

Hi,
To Answer your question, we are changing from using the word sweep to ASW Search. I found out that sweep somehow infers that the search is automatic and it is not.

1) Will eligible surface units sweep automatically? Or to put this another way, is there a way to move and not sweep? For a transport to sweep seems like a pretty bad deal to me (particularly with a mandatory attack afterwards).

The Search is entirely up to the player to decide to search or not. So after movement or pressing the letter 'm' (instead of moving, attacking or repairs) the ASW search icons will appear

for you to decide which hex to start the search.
Transports may search if they want, but the probability is low that they will find a sub. The transports can not attack a sub that is revealed, but if they find one then
Air Units that are able to attack may do so up to two attacks.

2) It says you can sweep for "hidden" subs, would it be possible to sweep for (and therefore immediately attack) revealed subs as well? If not, it seems a bit paradoxical that a revealed sub is safer on the map than a hidden sub.

b) states that ASW sweeps has been reworded to say ASW search that are successful the naval unit will attack the first sub revealed. Any other subs if found will be made visible and subject to attacks by other available units that can attack. (ie adjacent naval units, Air Units)

We discussed about Air Units doing that, but it was rare that the air units would force a sub to surface when just looking like a DD would. Air units would come in and attack

once subs were discovered and could engage. Every level of ASW achieved counts not just when your unit gets upgraded for sub combat (that different) and unit also receive a bonus

for radar tech levels achieved.

So subs can be in one of 3 modes 1) Visible. This mode can happen when the sub commander attacked a naval unit, was revealed using an ASW search or because the sub ambushed a moving naval unit.
2) Ambush. This mode corresponds to the current versions where subs are invisible after moving or the next turn. If the sub ambushes a unit, in other words the enemy purposely
runs into the sub to expose the sub to Air Unit attacks.
3) Sentry. Now the player may place the sub on Sentry (Zzz) by pressing the 'z' or 's' after movement or later by using Right-click on the unit to place the sub on Sentry. Subs on Sentry will not attack. Enemy surface units can move right over the Sentry sub. So you can park subs just to be spies and attack when you want. The tactic of hunting down subs by just running into them can only happen now only if the sub player wants the subs on Ambush.

Generally speaking air units on ASW patrol would catch U-boats on the surface, since most of their movement to and from station would be on the surface (18 knots vs 7 knots or so submerged). Ideally, the solution would be to make subs spottable by air units if they used up more then, say, 1/3 of their MP in the turn before, but that may be tricky to code.

Status of GS v2.2 right now is that we hope to have finalized the code and found a good base for values for sub evasion and sweeps. We're testing with these settings right now and if the results are ok we can prepare for release.

We spent quite a bit of time with Case Yellow since the map in Belgium is changed. Some minor changes have been done to give the Axis player a fair chance to do blitzkrieg turn 2. Blitzkrieg turn 3 will almost always succeed if you get fair weather. I will post in a separate thread how you can do blitzkrieg on turn 2 in GS v2.2.